Self-awareness Quotes

"If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself."

- Paulo Coelho

"At the innermost core of loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self."

- Brendan Behan

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

- Blaise Pascal

"Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself."

- Thomas Browne

"I was never less alone than when by myself."

- Edward Gibbon

"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets."

- Paul Tournier

"A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable."

- Eileen Caddy

"Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Solitude is the place of purification. In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself."

- Martin Buber

"Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was."

- Cheryl Strayed

"Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Knowing how to belong to yourself is an art in a world where everyone is finding their home in others."

- Renuka Gavrani

"Why does no one tell us how important it is to enjoy being single and being by yourself? That time is defining and amazing and nothing to ‘sure’. It is being alone that will actually set you up the best for being with someone else."

- Drew Barrymore

"Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think."

- Laszlo Bock

"I need to retire from retirement."

- Sandra Day O'Connor

"I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades."

- Duffy Daugherty

"I want to be alone."

- Grand Hotel (1932)

"Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look."

- Marcus Aurelius

"You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

- Marcus Aurelius

"The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself."

- David Goggins

"The attitude is very important. Because, your behavior radiates how you feel."

- Lou Ferrigno

"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."

- Robert Fulghum

"I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."

- Hunter S. Thompson

"For fear you will be alone, you do so many things that aren’t you at all."

- Richard Brautigan

"I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone."

- Daniel Keyes

"30 is the age when you realize that the most important relationship you'll ever have is with yourself."

"Sometimes you need to be alone. Not to be lonely, but to enjoy your free time being yourself."

"The company gave me an aptitude test and I found out the work I was best suited for was retirement."

- Unknown

"You can’t control what goes on outside, but you can control what goes on inside."